Barcelona Plans a Lasting Olympics

By PAUL DELANEY, Special to the New York Times

Published: October 21, 1987

BARCELONA, Spain—
The organizers of the XXV Summer Olympic Games, which will be held in this old Mediterranean port in 1992, are using the 1984 Los Angeles Games as a guide for a few aspects of their planning effort. But over all, Barcelona is taking an entirely different approach toward its production.

Neither Mayor Pascual Maragall nor Jordi Serra, the coordinator of the city's Olympic committee, hesitated to answer when asked what they had learned from Los Angeles.

''For one thing,'' the Mayor said, ''we won't make a profit.''

The primary reason for this prediction is that the Barcelona organizers plan to use much of the money they raise to build new facilities that will become permanent assets after the Olympics. Los Angeles, he pointed out, ''didn't have to build a thing'' in order to be host to the Games.

''The day after the Los Angeles Games, the city reverted to what it was before,'' Serra said. ''The Games meant only a temporary change in decor, not structure.

''Their success was not reflected in buildings and structures, but in people's hearts. Our aim is to make memories linger in the hearts and minds, too, but we also want to create something that people can refer to as before and after.'' New Beltway, New Museum

This 2,000-year-old city anticipates such post-Olympic benefits as a new beltway, an expansion of its telephone and cable-television systems, the conversion of the Olympic Village into 14,000 three- and four-bedroom apartments and a new museum of modern art.

Builders are completing renovation of the main Olympic stadium, where the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as the track and field events, will be held. The 70,000-seat stadium, built in 1929 for the Universal Exhibition, is part of what organizers here call the Olympic Ring, which will also include a new 17,000-seat domed Olympic Hall, smaller stadiums and other facilities.

The Ring is one of four chief sites for the Olympics. The others are the Diagonal, which includes the 120,000-seat Nou Camp Stadium, site of the soccer final, the Val d'Hebron with its municipal velodrome, and the Parc de Mar, the site of the Olympic Village.

Even before Barcelona won out over Paris as the site of the 1992 Games, many people had the feeling that this would be Barcelona's time in Olympic history.

The city's presentation before the International Olympic Committee was bold and confident. The Barcelona committee said that the city had unanimous support from all Spanish government officials, an inherent love of sports, proven organizing ability, exceptional climate, adequate accommodations, security and an identity as a cultural giant. And with a wink, some here acknowledge that it did not hurt that the president of the I.O.C., Juan Antonio Samaranch, is a resident of the city. 'Big Changes Under Way'

''We've had great plans for this city for a long time, and we were moving along rather well,'' said Oriol Bohigas, an architect and a former city planner in Spain's second-largest city after Madrid. ''But now, the Olympics will really propel us. Big changes are under way.''

Bohigas said that new development in the city of nearly 2 million will evolve from the Olympic Village on the sea and spread to other sections. Leopoldo Castane Rodes, a banker, said foreign investment, on the rise before the city was selected, was expected to reach boom proportions.

Not everyone is happy that the Games will be held in Barcelona. Among the displeased are anarchists, fascists and radical separatists. Police have blamed Terra Lliure, a Catalan separatist organization, for several bombings and attempted bombings here in the past few months. And ETA, the radical Basque separatist group, has also claimed responsibility for incidents in the area. 'A Lot of Advice'

In the past, ETA - which is an acronym from the Basque language words for Homeland and Freedom - has usually not targeted Barcelona with bombings. But police say the group has recently changed tactics. In the most violent incident this year, 24 shoppers were killed in May when a car-bomb exploded in the underground parking lot of a supermarket. Maragall, the Mayor, said that security was of prime concern to the city's Olympic organizers.

''We have met with teams from America's State Department and National Security Council; we're in touch with private security firms; we talked to security people from Los Angeles, and the International Olympics Committee is advising us,'' he said. ''We're getting a lot of advice. The I.O.C. told us we had too many agencies, 70, involved in security. We've cut that down and named a single person to be in charge of security planning.''

In a city whose commercial go-getter spirit has historically both impressed and irritated, officials said that neither the recent violent incidents nor threats have had an impact on enthusiasm in Barcelona, and the residents are counting on the success of their spectacle.